


Strange Bedfellows

by leggywillow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:44:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leggywillow/pseuds/leggywillow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An overthrown bann hires a couple of unlikely mercenaries to take on an expedition that may help him reclaim his bannorn. It's a random short story taking place in the Dragon Age setting with some original characters of mine. Originally posted as a solo/short story on Warden's Vigil where I role-play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

 

            Mercenary work made for strange bedfellows.  There weren’t too many other lines of work that could bring a dwarven rogue and an elven apostate to a shadowed corner of the Gnawed Noble, but folks had to eat.  Those who had survived the Blight found themselves willing to do a very great deal to ensure their next meal.

            The dwarf was red-haired, round-featured, and amply proportioned.  She swaggered to the bar with the kind of confidence that should belong to someone several feet taller and ordered two ales, setting one down in front of the elf.  She peered at her companion: blonde and dark-eyed, which was a little weird for an elf.  Usually their eyes were grassy green or sky blue or whatever other magical nature colors existed.

            The dwarf broached a topic of conversation: “—just think of all the money we could make if—“

            “No, Maeva” the elf replied, her voice flat but soft, with the tone of one who had played out her role in this conversation many times before.

            “You didn’t even hear me out.”

            “I don’t need to.  I don’t care how badly you want to be a brothel owner someday; I will not be your first employee.”

            “You say that like I’d be a bad boss.  I’m a little hurt.”

            “Don’t care.”

            “You’re such a bitch sometimes, ‘Dara.  I try to tell you you’re pretty enough to make a lot of money whoring, and you throw it right in my face.”  The dwarf returned to her drink with an expression of deepest hurt, and the elf shrugged.

            They drank silently, which wasn’t much fun for Maeva.  She went through two more mugs of ale while the elf’s remained barely touched.  The elf’s eyes slid from person to person, quietly watching each patron who came into the tavern.  Maeva supposed she couldn’t blame her for being twitchy.  Adara might be a valuable asset to the mercenary gang, but that wouldn’t protect her if the Chantry came calling.

            The elf saw their contact approaching before Maeva did, apparent in the sudden tension in her shoulders.  The man who approached them was blonde and handsome, the kind of fellow Maeva would easily give a tumble to in different circumstances, and he wore the grim expression of someone who found his current task distasteful.  “You Kay’s boys?  Ah, girls.”

            “Took you long enough to show up,” Maeva said, eyeing him up and down.

            “Not so long.  Just forty beats of a raven’s wing.”

            Adara and Maeva exchanged a glance upon hearing the appropriate phrase and rose together from their table.  “You’re the errand boy, I take it?” Maeva asked, stretching out her arms and legs after sitting for so long.  “The rich ones never show up in person.”

            The man’s jaw worked in annoyance, but he managed a nod.  “I’ll take you to him.  Follow me.”  With a wave, he gestured for the women to follow him to the staircase that wound up to the private rooms above the tavern.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Adara brought up the rear, her eyes scanning the tavern for anyone showing too much interest in the small party retreating up the stairs.  No one did.  The Gnawed Noble was used by the wealthy for such business for a reason.  Maeva was more interested in watching their escort’s ass as he navigated the stairs.

            The blonde man opened a door at the end of the hall and bade the women to enter first.  Adara tensed, but Maeva plowed right on in without a care in the world.  The dwarf was never anything less than obnoxiously confident, but knowing she had a mage ally at her back likely bolstered it.  The mage herself was not nearly so cocky.

            The door was closed behind them, and the blonde man stayed outside.  Wise precaution.  The interior rooms at the Gnawed Noble had no windows, and even in daylight the room would have been pitch black without the crackling fire in the hearth.  Their attention was more focused on the man who stood beside it.

            His clothing was very fine though he wore no sigil to identify him.  Black hair curled around his ears, and when he turned his face to look at them, they could make out a strong jaw and grim eyes that seemed to belong to a much older man.

            Greenish eyes slid from one woman to the next, but he kept his judgments to himself.  “Kay sent you?” he began.

            “Sure did, handsome,” Maeva piped up.  “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t paid, so let’s skip the dancing about.  I’m Maeva, this is Adara.”

            The man hesitated before speaking again.  “You may call me Theo.”

            “Short for Theodore, I guess?”

            He didn’t confirm that, but Maeva didn’t need him to.  “I was told that your employer came into possession of a certain box.”

            Adara paused to fish something out of the small pouch at her side.  Her fingers skimmed over the small painted box.  It did not open, and it looked as useless as a child’s toy, but she could feel the thrum of magic deep within it as she held it out.  Theo made no move to take it from her and nodded.

            “And _we_ were told that you were in possession of a certain map,”[/color] Maeva said, watching him expectantly.

            Theo crossed to a small table and waved them closer, spreading out a very old and worn map across its surface before finally holding out his hand.  Adara stepped close enough to carefully set the box on his palm.  His fingers closed around it briefly before placing it on the map.  There was a hum in the air that sounded like a distant song to Adara, and she watched with interest as the very ink on the paper stirred and lazily began to rearrange itself.

            Maeva snorted.  “Looks like blank moldy paper to me.”

            Theo ignored the dwarf and watched Adara expectantly.  “I was told that only a mage could read it.”

            She nodded.  “I can see it.”

            Theo nodded sharply and rolled up the map.  He made to tuck the painted box into a pocket, but Maeva’s hand shot out and stopped him.  “Hey.  Box is ours until we get our share of this treasure Kay told us about.  Call it a security measure.”

            “You already have the mage; it’s useless to me without one,” Theo retorted.

            “Humor us,” Adara said.

            The three of them regarded each other with only the pops of firewood making noise.  Theo released the box into Maeva’s hands, where it disappeared in the blink of an eye into a pouch.  “We will take the North Road to the coast, and from there my man and I can find the crypt.  Hopefully your services will not be required until we’re inside.”

            “Good, because you have to pay for anything extra.  Even being as cute as you are.”

            Adara was well-practiced at ignoring Maeva’s comments, and the nobleman seemed to be picking up on it as well.  “I expect a four day journey to the crypt.  Pack lightly, and meet us at the northern gates by dawn the day after next.”

            Theo turned away from them to stare into the fire in what was clearly a dismissal.  Maeva looked as though she had a slew of lascivious comments that she wasn’t prepared to tuck away for later, and Adara poked her in the shoulder.  “Let’s go.”

            They had quite a few preparations to make.


	2. Chapter Two

            It wasn’t yet dawn when the men arrived at the north gate, but Theodore had been too restless to sleep the night before.  The man at his side—Louis Darrow, who was less of a guardsman and more of a friend—looked bleary-eyed and let out a jaw-cracking yawn as they waited.

            Louis shifted from foot to foot, but Theo remained dead still with a grim look in his eyes that he had not been without for years.  The men were dressed in dark, casual clothing that did not give away their wealth or purpose, but there was a regality to Theo’s stature that Louis noted he had not always had.  It was almost funny how adversity could bring out a man’s strength, but the cost had been too high.  Warmth and laughter had been replaced by stone.

            “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked quietly.

            Theo did not look at him as he answered.  “Yes.”

            “What if it isn’t there?”

            “Then I’ll woo the Avvar some other way.”  Theo remained as impassive as a stone.

            Louis blew out a breath in frustration.  “Can’t we just…” he trailed off, running a hand through his hair.

            Theo’s eyes narrowed, and Louis realized that his friend’s taut control was slipping.  “Can’t we just, what?  Give up?  Is that what you were going to suggest?” he snapped.  “I will have the Avvar, and I will oust Bann Stafford from [i]my[/i] lands.  I will not stop until I’ve removed Stafford’s head from his shoulders, or until he’s hacked off mine.  I know how badly he wants to add it to the rest.”

            Louis looked away from the wild rage and grief on his friend’s face lest his own show through.  The Footes of Snowscrest—and the Darrows who served them—had been slaughtered when Bann Stafford took the opportunity to seize their bannorn in the chaos of the Blight years prior.  Scant few of had escaped, far too few to mount an assault against the opposing bannorn.  They needed an army: the Avvar who frequented their mountains.

            His stomach roiling with conflicted thoughts, Louis’s eyes fell on the two women approaching them.  Thank the Maker.  Their arrival was a blessed distraction.

            “Are we interrupting something?” Maeva asked far too cheerily for such an early hour in the day.

            “No,” Theo said, his face turning stony once more.  His eyes trailed over both women and nodded with approval.  “You packed light.  Good.”

            “Don’t mistake me, ser; I can take on much bigger loads than this,” Maeva grinned.  Adara closed her eyes briefly in a bid for patience, and Louis managed a smirk.  Theo only turned away and beckoned them towards the gates.  “Come on.  I want to make good time.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

            They did make good time.  The weather remained mild and clear, which left their path mostly unhindered when they had to venture off the North Road and make for the rugged coastline.  The air grew damper as they traveled north, and Maeva began to imagine that she could smell salt in the air.

            Theo pushed them onwards like a man possessed, urging them onwards when the sun was barely peeking over the horizon and only stopping when Louis insisted that it was too dark to progress.  He ignored Maeva’s constant complaining, and Adara said nothing as usual.

            Their camp was not cheerful.  Maeva’s eyes slid from one grim, silent companion to the next, and the dwarf rolled her eyes.  Everyone was so damn serious all the time.  She fished a flask of whiskey out of her pack and took several long draughts before deciding that the social situation was grim enough to merit [i]sharing[/i].

            She nudged Adara until the elf reluctantly took the flask and took a dainty sip.  Maeva snorted.  “That’s no way to drink.”  Adara only smiled and passed the flask along.

            “Thank you,” Louis said, raising the flask to the dwarf before drinking from it.

            Maeva shrugged.  “S’not right for folks to travel together without sharing a drink and a few secrets.  So tell me, then: what’s in this old Avvar tomb that you boys want so badly?”

            “I don’t see how that’s your business,” Theo answered icily.

            Maeva was used to icy, and she ignored the tone.  “If you wanted mindless muscle, you went to the wrong place.  You went to Kay, and you got specialty help: us.  That means you have to deal with our questions.”

            “Our?” Adara piped up in that quiet, dry way of hers.  Maeva ignored her too.

            “The deal was that we get to take as much of whatever is in that crypt that we can carry—except for one thing, a single mysterious object.  I want to know what it is,” Maeva said, watching her fingers drumming on the whiskey flask rather than meeting Theo’s eyes.  “Why not tell us?  Way I see it is, we’ll get so much loot that we won’t even care about whatever it is you’re after.  This deal is pretty heavily tipped in our favor, and I’d like to know why.  You don’t get to reach your mid-twenties without learning to ask questions.”  It was an old joke, and not a very funny one, that Maeva used all the time, but it had a ring of truth to it when one considered just how many bodies turned up in Denerim’s alleyways overnight.

            “It’s a sword,” Theo answered shortly.  “Just a sword.”

            “I could’ve recommended a good blacksmith in Denerim if that’s all you were after.”

            “Legend says it’s the blade of Korth the Mountain-Father, one of the ancient gods of the Avvar.  Only a handful of mortal warriors have ever wielded it, their stories passed down through each Avvar generation.  Anyone who holds it is believed to be worthy in the eyes of Korth,” Theo said, stretching out long legs in front of him as he leaned back against the trunk of a tree.

            Even Maeva looked a bit surprised by that answer, and she cocked an eyebrow.  “So you want to be the king of a bunch of dirty mountain men?  Again, I could’ve arranged that for you in Denerim.  The Pearl caters to a lot of tastes.”

            Louis snorted, and Theo glared at him before answering tightly: “I need their friendship.  That’s all you need to know.”

            “Sure.  I get it,” Maeva said.  Her tone was still teasing, but the glance she exchanged with Adara indicated that the women understood more than Theo likely assumed.  One didn’t specialize in shady, odd work for nobility without learning that it all came down to conquest and riches in the end in one way or another.  It wouldn’t matter much to them in the end what the lordling did with his old grave-robbed sword anyway.

            Louis rose, levering himself up with his hands on his knees.  “I think I’ll get a bit more firewood.”

            Maeva bounded up.  “Think I’ll go with you.  Even a big, strong man could use an extra hand now and then, yeah?”

            The dwarf had that predatory look in her eyes that Adara knew very well, and she sighed quietly.  Louis and Maeva retreated into the gloom, leaving Adara and Theo to resume their silent vigil around the campfire.


	3. Chapter Three

            Adara and Theo sat in silence for a long time with only the crackle of the fire and the rustling of the breeze through the leaves making any sound at all.  Adara sat cross-legged, shredding a dried leaf between her fingers and letting the pieces drift into a gentle pile on the ground by her knee.  Theo watched her with a frown creasing his brows until the elf turned her eyes towards him.  “May I help you?” she asked pointedly.

            To his credit, he didn’t look away.  “No.  I was just wondering how a mage comes to live beyond the Circle.”  They both knew that legitimate ways were few and far between.

            To _her_  credit, she did not attempt to stammer out some kind of excuse.  “I was under the impression that my freedom was quite useful to you.”

            He scowled.  “That doesn’t mean I approve.”

            She shrugged.  “I’m not seeking your approval.”  Another leaf tumbled to the dirt in small shreds.  “I’m here, and the rest is none of your business.”

            “Are you dangerous?  Without a templar.”

            “Are you?” she asked, meeting his eyes evenly.

            “I won’t turn you in, if that’s what you’re asking.  I’m not entirely stupid; I know they say it isn’t wise to cross Kay.”  The sort of specialty business the mysterious Kay had created did not grow to serve as many powerful clients as it did without gaining a reputation.  Handing over one of Kay’s people to the templars would ensure that Theo never benefited from her services again—and it may find him with a knife in his back someday.

            “And you’re a desperate man,” she observed softly.

            “I’m not—I mean…” he trailed off.  Theo rubbed a hand across the coal-black stubble on his face that never quite went away, his eyes narrowed with frustration.  “I haven’t always been this way,” he admitted quietly.  Adara tilted her head but said nothing, blinking away strands of thin blonde hair that the wind blew across her face.  The ghost of a warmer man was visible on Theo’s face in the hint of laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, but a ghost was all that it was.

            Theo snapped a stick in half with more force than necessary and tossed the pieces onto the dying fire.  “What’s taking them so long with the wood?”

            There was a Maeva-style joke there.  Adara didn’t say it aloud, but she smiled at the thought.  “Maeva is very thorough.”

            Theo climbed to his feet.  “They’ve been gone long enough.  The fire doesn’t need to burn for much longer and—“

            His words changed sharply into a pained cry as an arrow whizzed out of the darkness and buried itself in his shoulder.  “Shit!” a voice cursed from the treeline, and then dark figures were rushing out to meet them

\-----------------------------------------------------

            Theo brandished his longsword with his good arm, his shield left on the ground beside his pack.  He managed to get the sword up just in time to meet the brutal overhead swing of his opponent, the blades crashing together.  Theo pushed out and away to knock the blade aside before jabbing his own through the man’s belly, each movement sending blinding pain through his shoulder.

            Slow, poorly armored, an arrow that was ill-aimed… these were simply bandits of no particular skill.  What they lacked in skill they made up for in numbers, though it did not take very many opponents to overwhelm two defenders, particularly when one was injured.  He lost sight of the little mage.  Hopefully she was worth something in a fight.

            Theo turned to meet his next foe, a wiry fellow in comparison to the last man, when another lunged at him from behind.  He howled in agony as a hand wrapped around the arrow still buried in his shoulder, the man’s other arm grappling the sword out of Theo’s grasp.

            The bandit before him charged forward but stopped as though as he had smashed into an invisible wall merely inches away from Theo, and his face twisted with consternation.  “What’re you doing, Wendell?” the man behind Theo snarled.

            That was enough of a distraction for Theo to smash his head backwards into the nose of the man holding him, who cursed bitterly and relinquished his hold on the nobleman.  Wrestling the blade from the bandit’s grip was a messy business, but Theo gutted him before he could recover and whirled back around to face Wendell.

            What happened next seemed to happen very slowly.  Theo met his eyes and saw the horror there as Wendell’s hands jerked to a knife at his belt and drew it.  Wendell’s eyes flickered to the blade, and he managed a frightened whimper before bringing it across his own throat.

            Theo’s jaw went slack, and he gaped even as the dying man’s lifeblood spurted across the front of his tunic.  As Wendell fell, Theo’s eyes slid to Adara.  Two dead bandits lay at her feet, their heads smashed in beyond recognition, but Theo’s gaze was drawn to the blood that seeped down her wrists to redden her hands and drip onto the ground below.

            He went cold, and his good hand tightened around his sword hilt.  “Maleficar,” he whispered.


	4. Chapter Four

 

            Maeva and Louis had forgotten their wood-gathering when the first sounds of a distant scuffle reached them, and they raced for camp.  The pair burst into the clearing.  Louis’s longsword was drawn, and Maeva held a wickedly sharp dagger in each hand.  “Heard the fighting—what the fuck are you _doing?_ ”

            Amidst a slew of outlaw corpses, Theo stood with the edge of his blade pressed against Adara’s throat, his other arm held very still at his side to keep the arrow in his shoulder from jostling painfully.  Maeva leaped over a dead bandit without even looking at him and pressed one of her daggers into the nobleman’s back.  “Put your sword down, or I’ll carve out your kidneys and show them to you."

            “She’s a blood mage,” Theo spat.

            “Yeah, I know, you dipshit.  So does Kay.  It’s pretty helpful at times like this, so put your damned sword down.”

              Adara only stood there, meeting Theo’s eyes with a sort of fatalism.  Theo hesitated before looking away, his gaze flickered briefly to Maeva.  “You knew?  And Kay allowed it?  Kay _sent_ her?”  His voice wavered with disbelief and rage.

            “I’ve proven my loyalty,” Adara said, speaking up for the first time since before the attack began.

            “How can a maleficar know loyalty?  I know what you’ve done.  You belong to a demon.”

            A stricken look passed over her face, and the elf said nothing.  Maeva jabbed her dagger a bit harder into Theo’s side, hard enough to prick through his tunic and likely draw blood, though the nobleman did not flinch.  “I don’t care.  Put your sword down, or I swear I’ll gut you right here.”

            Louis stepped a bit closer with his blade raised, but he was clearly uncertain as to the best course of action.  “Look, everyone just stop.  Let’s all put the blades away, and someone explain to me what’s going on.”

            No one lowered their blades, but Adara spoke anyway.  “A few outlaws attacked us.  He killed a few, I killed a few.  Theo was injured and overwhelmed, and I… reacted.”

            Theo snorted.  “She forced a man to slit his own throat.  Maker, Louis, I saw him do it.”

            “Looks like it saved your ungrateful life, too,” Maeva snapped.

            Adara met Theo’s eyes calmly.  “So what is your plan?  To cut me down here and give up on your quest?”

            “I’ll find another mage.  You aren’t the only apostate in Denerim, I’m sure.”

            “Not from Kay, you won’t,” Maeva interjected.  “She’ll be pissed to the Void if you kill one of her favorite mages.”

            “Think of the time it will take,” Adara added softly.

            Maeva picked up on the threads of that line of thinking.  “She’s right.  To return to Denerim, find another mage, and allow your shoulder to heal on its own… that’ll be weeks.  You’ve been in an awful hurry this whole trip.”  The dwarf stepped away, her voice smug.  “You won’t kill her, because you can’t bear to lose that much time.”

            Now it was Theo’s turn to look stricken.  His grip on the blade seemed to tighten, and Maeva tensed in case she had misread him.  Then he backed away from Adara, letting out a low growl of frustration before flinging his sword to the ground in a show of temper.  “Fine.  _Fine_.  I won’t kill her, but I won’t let her run free, either.  Louis, bind her hands.  Now,” he added when the other man hesitated.

            Maeva’s expression twisted with frustration.  “You’re a right ungrateful bastard,” she snapped at Theo.  “You’re going to tie her up like a common criminal and still expect her to get that arrow out of your shoulder?”

            “And you’re a fool to trust a blood mage.  I’m only doing what I must.  Louis, I said bind them.”

            Maeva opened her mouth to complain further, but Adara shook her head.  “Let him,” she said in a tone of tired defeat.

 

* * *

 

            Though they had never been an exuberant group, the party that arrived at the seashore was much grimmer than the one that had set out from Denerim a few days prior.  Theo still favored his shoulder.  Though he had allowed Adara to remove the arrow and heal the injury out of necessity, complete recovery would require time and rest, neither of which the nobleman seemed prepared to give it.

            Adara walked in front of him, her gait awkward with her hands bound in front of her.  She occasionally stumbled over the uneven rocks that dotted the coast, but Theo remained close enough to steady her.  He sometimes even mumbled something close to an apology.  Louis and Maeva brought up the rear.

            Once they reached a cliff face that jutted into the sea, Theo bade them to stop.  “This is it.  We can’t enter until low tide.”

            Ever practical, Maeva asked: “Yeah?  What happens at high tide?”

            “We wait it out inside.  The tomb’s interior is supposed to be above the waterline, so it’s not like we’ll drown,” Louis said.

            “According to the word of someone who’s never even seen the place, I’ll wager.”  Maeva eyed the damp beach with distaste.  “Thought the Avvar were mountain folks,” she grumbled.

            Louis shrugged.  “They say that with enough time the very earth and oceans will move.  Perhaps the sea wasn’t here when they built the crypt.”

            After a few minutes of silent watching, Theo announced: “Shouldn’t be long now.  It looks like the tide is beginning to go back out.  Maeva, with me.  I want to make sure there are no surprises waiting for us around the entrance.  Louis, watch the mage.”

            Maeva and Theo climbed down to the rocky beach below, and Adara settled onto a large stone to wait while Louis kept watch.  He kept his sword drawn, though whether it was for fear of more bandits or the elven mage herself, no one could say.  Likely both.  Eventually he cleared his throat and spoke: “I’m sorry about the binds.  My friend has lost too much to take risks.”

            “He’s wise,” the elf said with a small shrug.

            “So, uh… how long have you been doing the… er, blood thing?”

            Adara looked at him suspiciously, but in the end what harm could there be in telling him?  She couldn’t make the situation any worse.  “Only a couple of years.  I was with Maeva, actually.  We got into a tight spot on a job in the city, and we both nearly died.  I did what I had to do.”  With her magic spent and Maeva dying in front of her eyes, what choice had there been?

            “Was it…” Louis hesitated, casting about for the right words.  “… worth it?”

            “I ask myself that a lot,” she answered with a faint and grim smile.  “Maeva is alive.  I’m alive.  That’s all that matters, but sometimes I wonder.”  The cost had been very high.  What was worth more: a life or a soul?

            “Can’t you just stop doing it?”

            Adara chewed her bottom lip briefly before speaking.  “It’s not as easy as that.”  She didn’t want to speak to a stranger—or anyone—about how terrifyingly good it felt to use blood magic, even better than the high of lyrium.  Or about the way it just seemed to _happen_ , to the point where she couldn’t recall making the decision to use it at all.  She could have smashed Wendell’s head in with a fist made of stone just like the others, but she had made the cut in her wrist almost without knowing it.  The song in her blood grew more difficult to resist as time passed.

            “There is still a price that must be paid,” she added, her voice barely more than a whisper.  Adara couldn’t escape the demon’s price, whenever she demanded it.  It made her a danger to everyone around her, and she knew it.

            Louis looked as though he would rather be miles away from the mage, but he had his orders.  He asked no more questions of her as they waited the long minutes until Maeva’s voiced called up to them from the beach.  “Oy, tide’s almost out.  Let’s get on with this.  It’s bloody wet down here, and I want it done.”


	5. Chapter Five

            “This is so much bullshit,” Maeva complained.  The dwarf had more reason to be annoyed than the others.  Even with the tide receded, the water that lapped at the jutting cliff came up to Louis and Theo’s waists.  “I’ll be treading water here in a moment.  Dwarves don’t swim; we have better sense than to muck around in gross salty water.”  A wave silenced her briefly, and she spluttered.

            Theo ignored her, reaching down to feel the rock face beneath the water’s surface.  “This is it,” he called over his shoulder before drawing in a deep breath and ducking down.

            “Um, _what_?” Maeva asked, raising her voice to be heard over the crashing surf.

            “Looks like it sank into the ocean over the years.  Only the top of the entryway is still here.  There’s a gap under the rock face: that’s the entrance.  Go on, then,” Louis urged.  Maeva gave him a dark look before dipping beneath the water.  Louis adjusted Adara’s bound hands around his shoulders and followed her.

            It was a short swim, ducking under the cliff face and through the only part of a submerged door still visible above the ocean floor.  Maeva, Louis, and Adara gasped as they surfaced in a half-flooded entryway.  Theo glanced at them over his shoulder, already shaking his map out of a waterproof canister and casting about for a dry surface to spread it on.

            “You alright?” Louis asked as he untangled the mage from his neck.  Adara nodded and awkwardly brushed her sodden hair from her face.

            “I thought low tide meant we wouldn’t have to swim,” Maeva complained as she fished out the little painted box that had started all of this mess and handed it to Theo.

            “Low tide means we can get in,” Theo corrected.  “This whole antechamber will be underwater as it comes back in, and we’d likely drown before we could get the door open.”  He spread a less-damp bit of cloth over a stone and laid the map flat, carefully setting the box atop it.  “I need the mage.”

            “Try her name.  I don’t go around calling you ‘the git,’ do I?” Maeva snapped.

            “It’s fine, Maeva,” Adara said as she crossed the room to peer down at the map and the spidery lines of enchanted ink that began rearranging themselves across it.  Theo watched her warily as dark eyes studied a map that he couldn’t even see.

            “It only shows one room at a time,” she noted.  “I see the main door, and the five in front of us.”

            “The fake ones lead to traps, I’m guessing,” Maeva mused sourly.

            Theo nodded.  “The Avvar were never great innovators, but they poured all of their wits into safeguarding this place.  The traps will be crude but no less deadly for it.”

            Adara jerked her chin towards the second door from the left.  “The lines converge there.  That’s the way.  I can’t sense any magic, but that doesn’t mean much.”

            Maeva was already cautiously prodding the door.  “Needs a key.  Fantastic.”  Theo gently nudged her aside and held up something key-shaped carved from stone.  “We’re prepared.  This venture has been over a year in the making,” he said as the rough-hewn key slid into the lock.  The ancient locking mechanism did not click so much as groan, and Theo threw his shoulder into it until the heavy stone door opened enough to let them through.  “Torches on the wall in here,” he called back after slipping through.  “The mage can light them.”

            Adara picked up the map and box and followed Theo through the door, Louis trailing behind dutifully.  Maeva looked sick as she peered into the pitch-black corridor beyond.  “I need to find a new line of work,” she muttered to herself.

 

* * *

 

            The series of chambers that tunneled deeper into the seaside cliff was extensive.  The little party passed through one room after another, pausing at the start of each one while Adara read the map and directed them away from traps and false pathways.  There were rooms where a misstep would cause the floor to crumble away, sending an unwary traveler down a long drop to a spike-filled pit below.  There were corridors where a depressed trigger would send rusted, ancient blades plummeting from the ceiling, and once Maeva narrowly stopped Louis from accidentally filling the room with a noxious gas.

            It felt as though they had been in the crypt for weeks.  They had gone through several torches, though Maker knew how much time had really passed.  They had only stopped to rest once, but even Maeva hadn’t complained.  The crypt was as eerily quiet as one might expect, and no one wanted to linger for longer than necessary.

            “This is the final room,” Adara said, her soft voice jarringly loud as it reverberated against the stone walls.

            “It has to be here, then,” Louis said.  Theo nodded tightly.  The sarcophagus at the far end of the room hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years, and the treasure piled neatly around it was gray from the thick dust covering it.

            Maeva sneezed as she started shifting things aside and kicking up clouds of dust, looking over the items and deciding whether they were worth enough to haul out.  Theo and Louis, meanwhile, shoved at the heavy lid of the sarcophagus until it fell aside in a thunderous clamor.

            Theo stared down at the corpse within.  “Maker, that’s creepy,” Louis muttered.  The body had been buried wearing a traditional Avvar headdress made of a wolf’s head, and both of them had been astonishingly well-preserved in the cool, dry air of the tomb.  Theo was more interested in the sword that lay on the corpse’s chest beneath folded hands.

            “Is that your fancy magic sword?” Maeva asked.

            “It’s not magic,” Theo said as he carefully pried away the dead fingers.  “Simply important to the right people.”  It was a very simple weapon, roughly carved and crudely decorated.  The blade itself was darker than any metal Theo had ever seen, and he held it up close to inspect it.  Getting it had been almost too simple, and Theo struggled to overcome his paranoia.

            He wasn’t particularly surprised, then, when bony fingers reached up to wrap themselves around his arm.  He was more shocked by Louis’s yell behind him and the sound of the ancient walls crumbling as shambling corpses forced their way out of them.

            “I should have known,” he said grimly.


	6. Chapter Six

            Maeva cursed and drew her daggers as the corpses came clambering out of the walls.  This final trap was one none of them had foreseen.  “Adara!” she shouted.  The dwarf raised a dagger to cut the mage’s binds, but Adara’s hands were already swathed in flames that sent charred rope falling to the ground.

            Maeva grinned.  “Tricky.”

            “It made them feel better.”

            They spared no more energy for talk as the undead fell upon them.  Louis and Theo had clearly fought together since boyhood.  Maeva and Adara did not have so many years working together under their belts, but they had learned to work with one another, mostly by staying out of each other’s way.

            The corpses were slow but numerous.  They crumbled into broken bones and dust beneath the heavy crash of metal shields and Fade-summoned stone.  Maeva and Louis were already grinning with triumph when the corpse in the sarcophagus finally dragged itself to its feet.  A frown pulled at Adara’s face as she felt a stirring across the Veil.

            “It’s a revenant,” she called.

            Dry, stiff flesh pulled away from black teeth in a grin, and Maeva gaped.  The dwarf tossed a dagger that skewered the dead thing through one eye, hoping to put out the demonic light that glowed behind it.  The revenant staggered back briefly, but its grin did not falter.  It picked up a greatsword from one of the many corpses now littering the room, the metal scraping against the stone floor.

            “Don’t charge it—“ Adara called, but it was too late.  Theo and Louis ran for the creature.  Louis’s shield smashed against the revenant’s hips, and Theo swung high, aiming to separate head from shoulders.

            The revenant blocked Theo’s swing and shoved against Louis’s shield with unearthly strength.  Louis flew back into the remnants of the wall behind him and groaned.  Theo met the demon’s next swing, but it was clear that he was outmatched.  Perhaps foolishly, he didn’t try to break and run.

            The room began to feel very hot, and Theo spared a glance for the elven mage who was wreathed entirely in fire.  Arms held out, her hair blown back but unburned, the mage met Theo’s eyes.  “Maeva,” she called.

            Maeva tackled Theo, knocking the surprised nobleman sideways and away from the revenant just as the massive fireball flew over their heads.  The revenant howled in fury as the fire enshrouded it, eating away at ancient flesh and bone until the demon had nothing left to grasp on this side of the Veil.

            Its teeth bared in anger, the revenant reached out with a bony hand, pulling the strings of the Fade’s power that it still controlled.  Adara’s heart sank as she recalled the rare ability of revenants to pull their unwilling enemies closer, but there was nothing she could do to avoid the grip of magic that dragged her through the air to be impaled on the end of its long, serrated blade.

            It managed to chuckle low in its chest even as the burning flesh melted from its face.  Her face pale with pain, Adara met the red glow of its eyes until they finally faded and the creature slipped back into the Fade.  Its body crumbled, and Adara fell to the ground with the broad blade still buried in her chest.

            For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

            Maeva pushed away from Theo, coughing and watery-eyed from the heat of the flames.  The ends of her hair were singed, but the dwarf didn’t care.  She ran to her fallen friend, falling to her knees and eyeing Adara with horror.  The elf curled around the blade that had completely skewered her, silent tears running down her dirt-streaked face as she struggled to breathe.

            “Oh, shit.  Oh fuck, damnit, Adara.  That was fucking stupid of you.  You can heal it, right?”

            Adara shook her head once.

            “Don’t be so damn cynical for once.  Theo!  Louis!  Get the fuck over here and help me,” Maeva called over her shoulder, an unfamiliar note of desperation hitching her voice.

            Louis knelt gingerly beside her, a hand cradling the ribs that had been cracked during the fight.  Theo knelt on her other side, his face as grim and unreadable as ever.  “She doesn’t have very long,” he said quietly.

            “Don’t say shit like that to me,” Maeva snapped, shoving him roughly.  Theo didn’t react to the shove, and his face softened as he looked down at Adara.

            “Thank you.  For saving us.  I don’t know if it matters now, but… I won’t forget.  You will be remembered.”  A strangely terrified look crossed the elf’s face at that.

            Maeva brushed the heel of her hand across her eyes.  “Stop saying that bullshit.  She’s going to be fine.  You can’t just kill mages like this, right?  ‘Dara, please.  Do the blood thing.  You saved me once with that, somehow.  Right?  Please.”

            Adara shook her head and grimaced as she struggled to speak.  Her gasping breaths were pained and shallow, and they could all hear the horrible whisper of air escaping her chest.  Maeva let out an audible sob and brushed hair from her friend’s face.

            It was to Louis that Adara’s eyes flickered, though, as she finally found the strength for words.  “What I said… price to be paid.”  Louis looked confused for a moment, and then with a jolt of alarm he recalled their conversation on the beach.

            “You aren’t talking sense, sweetheart,” Maeva sniffed.

            Adara held Louis’s gaze, and her eyes were bright with terror.  “Run.”

            Then her eyes closed, and Adara died.


	7. Chapter Seven

            “We need to go,” Louis said, his voice quiet but rough.

            Maeva looked at him with disbelief, her face red and streaked with tears.  “Fuck you.  I’m not leaving her here.  Not in this damn cave.”

            Theo looked at Louis with confusion.  The blonde man looked terrified, and Theo raised an eyebrow before carefully pulling him aside.  “What’s the matter with you?  One of us can carry her out easily.”  The elf didn’t weigh very much at all, and she only looked lighter in death.

            “I know it sounds strange, but something about what she said… I just… I don’t know.  I feel like we should leave her.”

            Theo started to shake his head when a new voice spoke.  At least, Theo thought he heard it speaking.  The voice seemed to reverberate through his mind, echoing through his skull and putting an itch in his teeth.  “Leave me?”

            Maeva drew in a sharp breath when Adara’s eyes opened.  The warm brown of the elf’s eyes was gone, even the very whites of her eyes replaced by black.  Louis cursed and grabbed the dwarf by the arm, roughly pulling her away from the corpse of her friend that was now smiling at them.

            “What the fuck?” Maeva asked hoarsely. 

            Adara pushed herself to her knees, hands wrapping around the sword that had run her through.  Even Theo let out a choked gasp when he saw that the bones of her fingers had spurted beyond the flesh to form terrible claws that clacked against the metal hilt as she drew it slowly from her chest.  Something cracked as the once-elf tilted her head at them, bloody lips spread into an eldritch grin.

            “I wanted this body to be in better shape than this,” she tsked, running a bony hand over the seeping wound in her chest.  “Stupid girl fought me so hard, and now neither of us has gotten what we wanted.”

            Louis tried to nudge Maeva behind him, drawing his sword and wincing at the pain of his broken ribs as he did.  Theo was already brandishing the Avvar sword.  The demon wearing their friend advanced a step, grinning a little wider—Maker, impossibly wide—as everyone stepped back in response.

            “I could have given you the power to take back your pathetic backwater of a bannorn.  Adara knew it.  We could have made you our toy, Theodore, and you would not have known or complained.  You would have been a king, and we would have been your queen.”

            Theo shook his head.  “I should have cut you—her—down as soon as I knew what she was.”

            Adara’s face twisted into a mockery of sympathy.  “But we all know you aren’t strong enough to do it on your own.  That’s why you came on this foolish journey for a dead man’s sword, isn’t it?  Tell me, Theodore Foote, do you think your sister cursed your name before she died?  How many of Stafford’s men had her before they stuck her head on a pike?”

            Louis reached out to grab Theo’s arm firmly.  “It’s baiting you.  We need to run.”

            A blood-covered finger bone tapped her chin thoughtfully.  “You took your brother’s place at Ostagar in search of glory like a foolish child, and you lost everything for it.  What was your sister’s name?  No matter.  No one will remember it.”

            “No!” Louis cried as Theo jerked out of his grasp and charged at the demon.

            The demon did not react to his charge at first, tilting her neck with an unsettling smile.  Then her mouth opened, jaw spreading wider than it should have been able to, and an ear-rending scream tore through the crypt.  Theo stopped and stumbled, the sword clattering from his fingers to the ground as he tried in vain to cover his ears.

            Maeva tried to plug her ears, but it made no difference.  The scream was in her head.  It felt as though her brains were going to shake right out of her skull, and she screwed her eyes shut.  “Stop it!” she cried out, her shriek echoing off the walls before she realized what she was saying.

            To her surprise, the demon obliged her, cracking her jaw back into place with a snapping sound that raised the hairs on Maeva’s arms.  “Just tell us what you want,” Maeva asked.  Maybe if she kept her talking…

            “I want to leave.  I want to walk in the sunlight as I was promised until this body rots around me.”  Nauseated, Maeva looked away as the demon stuck an exploratory hand into the hole in Adara’s chest.  “It won’t be long at this rate.  How much harm could I cause, really?”

            Theo’s hands groped for his dropped blade.  “I won’t allow a demon to walk freely.”

            “Take me with you, then,” she suggested.  “Imagine how easy it would be to kill Bann Stafford with my help.”  The demon’s voice dropped low, lips forming a smile that would have been sweet on Adara’s living face.  “I’ll tear him to pieces, and he will die knowing that you are the stronger man.”

            The air seemed to thicken in the crypt, and Maeva felt a pressure in her head.  The dwarf shook it and blinked, but Theo hesitated.  Sensing a crack she could exploit, the demon pressed further: “Think of how far you’ve already come, the things you’ve done already.  You killed for that map.  You ignored your Chantry’s laws to find my little mage.  It seems so very silly to turn away my help now.”

            Maeva watched as Theo seemed to consider it, and she scowled.  “You better fucking not.  I’m not going to let you do that,” she spat at him.  “That _thing_ is… that’s my friend she’s running around inside.  Adara deserves better.”

            “Did she?” the demon mused.  “It doesn’t matter.  She is gone.  The little blood mage made a fair deal.  To save _your_ life, I might add.  Was it worth it?  Losing her soul to save a vagrant like you?”  Louis’s hand tightened on her shoulder, but Maeva couldn’t feel it.

            There was a cloyingly sweet scent in the air, and there was a sense of heaviness in the crypt.  It was hard to breathe and harder to think.  There was a gravity to the hunch in Theo’s shoulders, as though a very great weight was pressing down on him.  The demon stepped closer, her voice eager and warm.  “Vengeance for your family.  Peace for their ghosts.  Isn’t that all you want?  For your sisters and parents?  The woman you loved?”

            The crypt was silent except for the click of the demon’s twisted finger bones tapping against each other as she watched.

            “I…” Theo sounded choked.  “I have no choice.”  He turned to Maeva and Louis with a dark and distant look in his eyes.

            “Ted…” Louis said, shaking his head.

            “I’ve come too far.  I need her help.”

            “Ted, please, _please_.  Don’t do this.  It’s a demon messing with your head.  You can’t listen to it.”

            The demon wrapped one arm around Theo’s shoulders, her lips leaving blood on his ear as she leaned close to whisper: “If they aren’t with us…”

            It felt as though ages passed in the crypt.  The nobleman swallowed hard, and then Theo shifted his grip on his sword, his face twisted with sorrow and self-loathing.  “I… am sorry,” he said, the words forced past gritted teeth.  Then he raised his blade.


	8. Chapter Eight

            Louis and Theo had been through an endless amount of shit together.  They had both lost everything—their homes, their families, people they loved—and yet their bond of brotherhood had survived all of that.  It had even survived Theo’s growing obsession with revenge that Louis had helped him indulge over the years.

            It would not survive this.

            “Ted, please,” Louis said, jerking up his blade to meet Theo’s and breaking away to dodge the wild swing of Theo’s shield that followed.  The sharp pains in his ribs slowed him down, and Louis knew it wasn’t a fight that could last very long.  Theo was stronger and faster than Louis on a good day, and this was not a good day.

            Theo said nothing, his green eyes dark and almost distracted.  “It’s the demon, Ted,” Louis wheezed as he parried another swing.  “She’s in your head.  This isn’t you.  This isn’t—“ he grunted in pain as Theo’s sword bit hard into his lower thigh.

            Louis staggered back.  It really wouldn’t be very long now as the warm blood soaked his leg, and he fell to one knee.  “They wouldn’t want this.  Your brother, your sisters, your wife.  This isn’t how they would want it.”

            “They’re _dead_!” Theo snarled, raising his blade to finish it.

            It all happened very quickly after that.  There was an otherwordly shriek as Theo’s blade fell and Louis’s rose in vain to meet it.  The demon, distracted by the fight, had underestimated the dwarf.  She had not noticed Maeva sneaking around behind her and leaping at her back, twin daggers slipping around to hack at her throat.  They bit deeply enough to nearly sever the dead elf’s head from her shoulders, and the demon fled back to the Fade.  There was nothing useful left for her.

            Louis’s upward stab would have been easy turned aside had the demon’s sudden departure from his mind not startled Theo.  His blade faltered and slipped from his grasp, and both men stared at the steel buried in Theo’s chest.

            “Oh, shit,” Louis whispered.

            Breathing raggedly, Theo’s lips spread in a rueful sort of grin.  “Th-than—“  His breath gave out before the word was finished, and Theo collapsed.  There was peace on his features that Louis hadn’t seen in years, since before the Blight that had set all of this into motion, and he knew that his oldest friend was dead.

 

* * *

 

            A pyre burned on the cliffs of the WakingSea that night.  Maeva and Louis had built it in silence after the arduous task of dragging their friends’ corpses out of the Avvar tomb.  Louis had given Maeva his cloak to wrap around Adara to hide the grisly results of the demon’s possession and Maeva’s final attack.  It made it easier to bear.

            They shared the pyre, nobleman and apostate burning together.  Neither Louis nor Maeva argued that their friends had deserved better.  They had deserved more honor than that, but their friends were also beyond caring.

            They stood back to watch it burn, Louis leaning heavily on the Avvar sword Theo had given up everything to obtain.

            “You want to say anything?” Maeva asked, her voice thick with tears the dwarf didn’t want to allow herself to shed.

            Louis shook his head.  “No.  I should, but… fuck, what can I say?  Besides that none of this should have fucking happened.  We never should have come here.  I never should have…” he trailed away, squeezing his eyes shut to keep anymore tears from falling.  He had shed enough already.  “Do you?”

            Maeva shook her head, but after a moment she looked down at the little silver ring in her hand.  It was the only possession that had meant anything to Adara, and Maeva blinked rapidly as she rolled it between her fingers.  “Knew we shouldn’t have taken this job,” she whispered quietly.

            The fire crackled on.  “What are you going to do now?” Maeva asked Louis.

            “Finish this for him.  Or try.  I’m not a nobleman.  Snowscrest never belonged to me, but the Avvar don’t care so much.  Maybe they’ll still help me gut Bann Stafford and take back what’s ours.  They might not, but… Snowscrest is home.  Theo died to get it back.  Nothing else to do but try.”

            Maeva nodded.  “Maybe… maybe I’ll come with you?” she suggested.  She shrugged and toed at the dirt, not looking at the blonde man.  “Not sure how I can stand to go back to Denerim without her.  Maybe if I help you finish things…” she shrugged again.

            Louis looked down at the dwarf and nodded.  “I’d appreciate the company.”  It would be difficult to be alone after this.  He didn’t want to endure it.

            By morning, the pyre had burned down to hot ash.  Smoke still painted the sky above the cliffs, but Maeva and Louis were long gone.

 

THE END

(Thanks to anybody who's read my weird little ficlet, heh.)


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